


Hope the Night Grows Kinder

by InsolitaParvaPuella



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Comfort Food, Dessert & Sweets, Developing Friendships, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Mild Hurt/Comfort, background Gender-Neutral Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25239109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsolitaParvaPuella/pseuds/InsolitaParvaPuella
Summary: Mercedes and Lysithea do not talk about what is troubling them and have a glass of warm milk before bed.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz & Lysithea von Ordelia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Hope the Night Grows Kinder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnapologeticallyMeatwad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnapologeticallyMeatwad/gifts).



When Lysithea opened the door, she was in her pale, ruffled nightgown and her hair was braided for sleep, but Mercedes could see fresh ink stains on her fingertips. She didn’t look remotely like she was ready for sleep.

“I couldn’t sleep and was going to make a hot drink,” she said, keeping her voice low. Leonie was a light sleeper and only one room over. “Would you like to join me?”

“How did you know I was awake?” Lysithea asked, sounding a little suspicious.

“Just a feeling,” she answered, and then continued before Lysithea could protest. “Shall we? I was thinking of preparing my mother’s recipe, milk with honey and spices.” Lysithea took her arm.

At night Garreg Mach was an odd place, although it had grown more familiar to Mercedes as the months wound on. The stone walls loomed above at strange angles. The greenhouse looked cold and sharp and unfriendly in the moonlight, and the fishing pond seemed to be a hostile pool of silver without anyone fishing from the pier. At the far end of the pond, the Professor was sitting and staring up at the moon. Their head turned, then went back to the heavens. Mercedes took that as permission to continue. She stepped lightly up the stairs and the cats that freely wandered the monastery scattered. Lysithea flinched at the sudden motion.

“Nothing to be scared of,” Mercedes said, and Lysithea’s grip on her arm got tighter for a moment.

“I wasn’t scared! Just… startled! By the sudden movement!” Her voice was high, and she certainly sounded like she wanted to believe it. Mercedes smiled to herself as they stepped into the dining hall. They walked near the wall, just in case some chairs had been left out for someone to trip on. Their footsteps echoed in the large room in ways that were impossible in the daytime.

“I suppose you haven’t walked around the monastery much at night. The cats are always up and hunting right about now.” The rumours of ghosts at the monastery were usually just the cats, leaping and yowling and sprinting by in the corner of her eye. But they did make for good stories.

“Are you walking around the monastery after curfew? It’s against the rules, isn’t it?”

Mercedes hummed to herself. “The Professor doesn’t mind. They’re the one in charge of keeping us in order, but as long as we don’t slip in our studies, they trust us to take care of ourselves.” The Professor had also once used several very colourful words to describe what a fool’s errand it was to keep Sylvain on the grounds, let alone in his dorm, but that didn’t seem like the sort of thing Lysithea would appreciate knowing. 

“I suppose the Professor did walk with me the one time I was out around curfew,” Lysithea said. They passed into the kitchen and the pair of them quickly lit several candles. The kitchen was large enough that the light couldn’t chase away all the shadows and the windows were thin and high, letting in only a beam of moonlight, but now there was a glowing, warm bubble around them. Lysithea seemed to calm a little once the candles were lit. Meanwhile, Mercedes crouched down in front of the shelf where the students’ personal ingredient stashes were kept. The containers were steeped in shadows, but their shapes and sizes were varied enough that the search was easy. Her small, round tin had once been home to expensive sweets, a gift from Baron Bartels. Now it held something far more valuable.

“Why are you awake this late?” Lysithea pressed. Mercedes shook the tin a little out of habit and it rattled pleasantly. Still the same sound, after all this time.

“Some bad memories kept me from falling asleep. When that happens I try to make something in the kitchen. It fills my mind with something else for a while. And then I have something sweet to enjoy instead.” She pried open the tin with her fingernails and the warm, pleasant smell of her spice collection filled her head for a moment. She glanced at Lysithea, whose shoulders were pressed down and inwards. She was fiddling with the end of a braid.

“Do you come to the kitchen a lot?”

“Only recently,” Mercedes said. “It will pass.” She held the box out to Lysithea, who sniffed it. She mumbled that it smelt nice. The tin was set on the counter and a small pot came down from its hook. There was a half-full pitcher of milk in the icebox, which Mercedes was happy to retrieve. That would be just enough for the two of them to have a generous mugfull each.

“Would you light the stove for me? Your control is probably much better than mine,” she said, and Lysithea went to the task, adding two logs to the stove, a little kindling, and lighting it with magic efficiently. Mercedes could clearly see the Professor’s technique in Lysithea’s posture, in how no movement was wasted. The three professors had taken all the students out to learn basic wilderness survival a while ago, but Lysithea still mimicked their actions precisely. 

“Thank you. Normally Annie lights the stove for me, but she’s definitely asleep at this hour.” She poured the milk into the pot and let it sit on the stovetop. The stove would take some time to warm up, time enough for her to prepare the next step.

“Why did you ask me to come?” Lysithea asked, now seated on a step-stool as Mercedes fetched a paring knife and the last vanilla pod—about the length of her finger—from her tin. On a small cutting board, by the dim moon- and candlelight, she split the pod and began to scrape out the thick paste inside. The fragrance was powerful and she heard Lysithea sniff the air as the scent wafted through the kitchen. As she worked, she considered her reply.

There were easily half-a-dozen answers she could give, from the merely cordial (“It would be impolite to not offer”) to the overly-sincere (“I miss my little brother terribly and long for the chance to offer anyone the love I cannot give him”). Mercedes weighed them all in turn; she could hardly say this was just her offering for the sake of good manners, but Lysithea would resent her forever if she knew Mercedes saw some flashes of her little brother in her. She settled somewhere in the middle.

“I know how lonely it is to be the only one awake, and unable to fall asleep. I wanted to help.”

Lysithea bristled. “I don’t want pity. I’m not lonely and I can take care of myself.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant,” she said, and it was true. “I offered company for my sake. The kitchen can get rather sad at night, especially when you’re used to it in the daytime.” Talking to herself in the darkness felt too much like talking to ghosts, and not the kind from her stories. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she sent the paste on her knife into the milk. She also dropped in the empty pieces of the pod, and stirred gently with a wooden spoon.

“Oh, well. If you need a companion, I can do that,” Lysithea answered, some confidence coming back into her voice. “I was only doing some extra reading before going to sleep.”

It didn’t seem kind to call out Lysithea on the lie—even if her delicate fingers were stained by ink and her mumbling carried through the dorm walls—so Mercedes hummed to herself for a moment instead and leaned over the pot slightly. She couldn’t smell the vanilla from the milk yet, so the milk was not yet warm enough for the next ingredient. She stirred slowly, letting the soft sounds from the stove fill the room. Despite the thoughts that had kept her awake, she could feel some calm settling in her chest. Lysithea broke the silence again.

“Do you ever feel like you’re running away from those bad feelings? Like they’ll come back as soon as you’re done r—whatever you’re doing?” Her voice was so small again, Mercedes strained to hear her under the soft noise of the stove. She recognised the tone of her voice though, and wanted to wrap her arms around Lysithea. But Lysithea would not appreciate that, and so Mercedes kept her back to Lysithea and gave her question her full attention.

“I don’t know if it feels like running,” Mercedes answered, waving her palm over the pot. She could smell the fragrant vanilla wafting from the pot now, and the milk was getting warm enough to give off some heat. Carefully, she scooped the empty pieces of the pod from the milk with her wooden spoon and left them on top of the cutting board. She took the small jar of cinnamon from her tin and uncapped it, taking a second to enjoy the aroma. Then she took a generous pinch of the spice between her fingers and sprinkled it into the milk. She stirred it a little more, hardly thinking of the milk as her body followed familiar rhythms.

“I don’t think it’s running away,” she continued, “more like getting another blanket. I have a lot of good memories of baking, trying out recipes with Annie or learning from my mother. Those memories are like an extra blanket on a cold night; the cold is still there, but I have more protection.” 

Lysithea made a little noise of acknowledgement. “I don’t know what my blanket would be,” she muttered into the darkness. Mercedes added honey to the milk, a spoonful that was more generous than usual. Once she was sure it was properly combined, she reached up into a cupboard that was too dark to see into and groped around for two mugs. She poured the milk into them. The familiar aroma rose in the steam and hit her hard. She took a second to stow her tin of spices back on the shelf, then handed one of the mugs to Lysithea. The soft sound of air whooshing through the chimney and the crackles of the burning wood dominated the kitchen.

There was nothing Mercedes could say to Lysithea that would solve whatever was bothering her, particularly when it was clear that Lysithea was not going to share what was upsetting her. But, at least she could try and help in some small way. “If it helps, you can borrow mine when you need it,” she offered, and Lysithea bowed her head over her mug.

“I don’t want your charity,” she said, but there was none of the irritation present in her earlier protests.

“It’s not charity. I want to be your friend, and be there when you need it,” Mercedes said, taking quiet steps until she was behind Lysithea. She stayed on the step-stool she’d claimed for her seat, cradling the mug in her hands.

Lysithea took a sip of her drink. “Thank you, Mercedes,” she said. “This is really nice.”

Mercedes also took a sip. It was almost as good as she remembered, when her mother had made it for her during the bad nights. She wondered if this was how her mother had felt, sitting in the warmth and darkness and sharing a soothing drink, because there was nothing else to chase away the bad memories. Had she felt that strange mix of serenity and despair when there was nothing to do but offer a warm blanket and hope the night grew kinder?

She heard Lysithea sniffle softly. Looking down, Mercedes saw how small Lysithea’s trembling shoulders were. When she said, “Any time you want this, you can ask for it,” they shook a little harder.

Lysithea’s shaky “thanks” cut through the darkness, and Mercedes had to breathe in the steam from her milk long and deep to keep her feelings in check. The sounds of the fire grew softer, the milk cooled, and Mercedes let the sensations blanket her.

**Author's Note:**

> is the food a metaphor when the text basically says "mother's milk" and then just leaves it at that? anyways, i hope that was sour enough for your liking, recip! 
> 
> please do not actually use a vanilla bean for this recipe, vanilla extract (like, a drop or two) or vanilla sugar (a pinch!) will work just as well and not cost an extraordinary amount of money. otherwise, bon appétit!


End file.
